Philippines Urged to Take Leadership Role on Climate Change

MANILA — The Philippines has an outsize stake in uniting the world on climate-change commitments, the European Union Commissioner for Climate Action says.

Connie Hedegaard told a news briefing on Friday in Manila that the Philippines should take a leadership role in prodding larger, wealthier nations to agree to a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The country has a lot at stake, as the third-most vulnerable country on the planet to extreme weather and rising sea levels.

Speaking between meetings with local officials, Ms. Hadegaard said the EU and the Philippines share some views on how to “inject some ambition” into the 2015 talks on a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

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Both are parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty binding industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to forestall, if not reverse, global warming. The U.S. signed the Kyoto Protocol but didn’t ratify it, while Canada withdrew from it two years ago.

Commissioner Hedegaard said frequent floods in Manila in recent years, including the flooding caused by the typhoon-intensified monsoon last month, puts the country in a “very interesting role” to help convince large producers of greenhouse gases on the need to act decisively on climate change agreements.

“I’m extremely impatient…with a world that says it wants to address these issues but at a phase that is modest, too modest. That is why we want to inject some sense of urgency in the 2015 conference,” Ms. Hedegaard told The Wall Street Journal. “The challenge is to move a bit faster because that is what we need to do.”

The WorldRiskReport 2012 of the United Nations University Institute of Environment and Human Security identified only Vanuatu and Tonga as more vulnerable thatn the Philippines to extreme weather events and increases in sea levels. An archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines is situated between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea and is battered every year by around 20 typhoons.

Since the Philippines passed the Climate Change Act in 2009, the country’s climate change policy agenda has shifted from mitigation to adaptation and disaster-risk reduction.

Ms. Hedegaard said the E.U. is committed to reducing greenhouse gases by at least 20% by 2020, adding that one-fifth of the bloc’s budget for the next seven years will be spent for projects to address climate change.

She said that Europe believes that “intelligent way forward would be to solve our economic issues, our growth problems…the job and social aspects and the environment and climate change at once. In the end, it is about how we are creating the growth in the future,” she added.

The E.U. has been helping the Philippines by extending assistance to protect its forests, while European companies have invested in renewable energy projects in the Southeast Asian country.

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